1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments described herein relate generally to an electronic device with a dictionary function suitable for searching for, for example, German compound words and a dictionary data display method.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a desired word or phrase is searched for on a conventional electronic dictionary device, the characters of a word or phrase to be searched for (or the search characters) are key-input or handwritten sequentially, starting with a first character. Then, each time a search character is input, entry words of dictionary data prefix-matching the input character string are retrieved and displayed in list form.
This makes it possible to retrieve entry words corresponding to the desired word or phrase even if all the characters constituting the desired word or phrase are not input to the last.
German has compound words of combinations of two or more words, such as a compound noun obtained by combining different nouns into a word. A compound word is composed of two elements, a prescriptive word in the front part and a base word in the rear part. Therefore, a compound word includes many letters. For example, when the compound word “buildungsfernsehen” (educational television) obtained by combining the prescriptive word “bildungs” (education) with the base word “fernsehen” (television) is retrieved, this causes the problem of not only involving a lot of trouble in inputting letters but also increasing the possibility that the compound word will be misspelled.
A conventional electronic dictionary device has been considered as disclosed in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2004-206538 as follows. With the disclosed electronic dictionary device, when an entry word that coincides with a compound word input as a search word has not been retrieved, the compound word is separated into a prescriptive word part and a base word part. A piece of explanatory information corresponding to an entry word for each of the separated word parts is read from dictionary data and displayed side by side, thereby enabling the contents of the compound word to be understood.
There is no conventional dictionary device with the function of retrieving an entry word by inputting a compound word by a method differing from normal entry word retrieval. With a conventional dictionary device, it is particularly impossible to input a compound word with many letters easily and correctly.